Adam Gemili cannot quite believe what a week it has been. Seven days ago the 18-year-old footballer turned sprinter was a virtual unknown outside of the sport, but after running the 100m in 10.08sec in Regensburg last Saturday he became an overnight sensation. The fastest man in Britain, the second fastest man in Europe, the second fastest British junior of all time, and now tipped to claim a place at the Olympic Games this summer – even Usain Bolt is talking about him.

"I'm really thrilled with what I've done," says the former footballer who was on the books of Chelsea, Reading and Dagenham and Redbridge until he decided to concentrate on athletics in January. "Before I ran 10.08 I wasn't even considering the Olympics at all. I just thought at the most maybe try and get in for the relay, that's all."

With the likes of Dwain Chambers and Mark Lewis-Francis still struggling to get the Olympic A qualifying time of 10.18sec – Chambers ran 10.29 in Italy on Friday night – Britain's current fastest man has piqued the interest of the head coach, Charles van Commenee, but Gemili has yet to decide whether he will even compete at the Olympic trials, which start on 22 June, just five days after the trials for the world junior championships – the competition he has been training for all season.

"Charles congratulated me and stuff which I really appreciate," said Gemili, "but we haven't really spoken much about what's going to happen for the future. It does feel great to run quicker than all these guys I used to watch on telly and used to look up to, guys who used to inspire me to run. It does feel great knowing you're on a similar level as them. "It's a good situation to be in, it feels really good all the support I'm getting. But I'm not there yet. Everyone assumes I've made the [British Olympic] team, that I'm straight in."

After three rounds at the world junior trials next weekend, it may not be so easy. "My body will still be recovering. I don't want to go to the Olympic trials and be half-hearted and not at my best. It depends how I feel. There is a possibility of being exempt [from the world junior trials via a wildcard] but I want to do them. I want to go and show what I can do and make the team that way. Because it's my own age group I'd like to compete."

The dilemma of which path to take is a difficult one for any prodigiously talented junior making the transition to a senior career.

Last year Britain's best young female sprinter Jodie Williams decided to skip the world championships in order to concentrate on the European juniors, while Lewis-Francis famously chose the world junior championships – winning the 100m title – over the Olympics in Sydney in 2000. Bolt warned Gemili to think carefully about his next steps, but the teenager who has an A grade GCSE in Japanese, is unperturbed.

"I've got a mentally positive attitude. At the moment I'm doing well. It's great Usain Bolt is speaking about me and I've put my name out there, but I'm just focusing on myself, not on anyone else."

After winning silver at the European junior championships last summer, having had virtually no formal athletics training, the Kent teenager decided to concentrate on the sport in earnest, joining coach Michael Afilaka's training group last October.

The day he turned up to train with the likes of Olympic finalist Jeanette Kwakye at Lee Valley, Gemili didn't even know how to warm up properly. His technique was, in a word, "horrible". "Wipe the board and start again," says Gemili, laughing. "There was no technique there actually at all it was just get there from A to B as quickly as possible."

Playing football, Gemili counsels, teaches you nothing about how to run fast. "The first time I joined my coaching group we went out in the cold rain on the track and did a lactic session and I just died after that. I was lying on the line, thinking 'what?' and my coach just said, 'yep, let's go again' and they went again and again it was a real shock.

"For the first couple of weeks it really hit home. I wasn't myself I was coming home really tired, but your body changes and just gets used to it and then you get better. When you see top athletes on the TV running you think, 'oh I can do that' but when you actually go behind the scenes and see how hard they all train, the sessions they put in for what is a short season – for the amount of work you do, for three months of athletics competition you do six months of training, I think it's the only sport where that happens. It's so intense."